Amid Losses, Sony Cuts HDTV Output

Sony is now forecasting a $2.9 billion annual operating loss (the first dip into the red in 14 years)—in sharp contrast to its earlier predictions of a bump in profits in 2008 of about $2.2 billion.

The company says sales are estimated to drop as much as 13 percent (to $86 billion), rather than grow the modest 1.4 percent it had been predicting. The bleak numbers confirmed by Sony this week began to trickle out soon after CES earlier this month (HD Notebook, Jan. 13, 2009).

Sony, a major HD products maker, notably with its Bravia line of HD sets, will scale back its HDTV production by restricting its assembly-line output to one of two flat-panel factories in Japan for the foreseeable future. Consequently, Sony now estimates sales of about 15 million HD LCD sets for this fiscal year (down about 1 million units from an earlier estimate), according to Business Week.